Man what a month!

Ok again...It's been a while. This blogging stuff is work and honestly I have been so busy working through my life, it's been hard to write. So what have I been up to? Well the month of January consisted of my friend, Kristen and me injecting ourselves with daily doses of hormones. I can honestly say that I am so over needles at this point, it isn't even funny. Why you ask? Well if you didn't read the previous post, we were pursuing the egg donation route. I say WERE because as of last week all our efforts as human pin cushions didn't pay off. We found out Wednesday that the pregnancy test was negative and that's all I will say about that.

I thought I would be devastated, but this month I feel like I have actually grown up! It's a bitter sweet thing. Throughout this past month I have realized that I can't control everything. No matter how bad I want something to work, in the end sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I get so focused on doing something and trying to make something happen or fix something that I think needs fixing, that I forget to live life. This is what I have realized...Nothing in life should ever be expected or given to you just because you think you deserve or want it really bad. I just have to accept this this fact and live my life knowing that things will come.

So with that being said, we have decided to forgo any more fertility treatments and I have also decided to get off all the depressing ferlity online message boards. I know that with my chromosomal translocation, that persistence and patience are the keys to having a baby. It will not be an easy road, but as I have learned, nothing in life worth anything is easy. It usually takes hard work and dedication to get what you truly want. I feel like trying on our own and preparing mentally to take our time without the help of doctors, will be hard, but so much more meaningful in the end.

I am also done feeling sorry for myself for my "condition." Just because I don't have kids, doesn't mean my life is a failure. My life's happiness does not hinge on the successes/failures of whether or not we can have babies. I can sit around and cry about what I don't have or I can celebrate and embrace what I do have. I don't want to go through life trying to have kids. Instead, I want to LIVE life and when kids come, they come. Forrest and I have been given an opportunity to do what we want, when we want and how we want. We are blessed to have each other, our life and still the hope that kids will happen. I feel like I am in such a good place mentally, that I can say without hesitation, that I am excited about our unknown future and what life will throw our way.

I believe that we will be parents one day and until then, I want to grow more into my adult self, in my relationship with Forrest and in life. I can honestly say that for the first time in my life, I feel in control of me! I have realized I can't control anything or anyone else in my life, and to me that is complete freedom and power. It's only when I decided to let go of the control I thought I had over everything else in my life, that I truly am able to live without fear or judgment...and for that I am grateful and at peace with what is.

Update...

Ok, I know it has been a while since my last post, but things have been crazy to say the least. I just got off the phone with my fertility doctor and today we are starting our journey into making a baby, the unconventional way :). I am so excited to say that we have decided to conceive via egg donation! After countless hours of research into adoption, genetic testing and other ideas, Forrest and I felt that this would be the next best thing to me having a baby on our own. My doctor told us that egg donation gave us our best odds of having a healthy baby and it would save us lots of heartache in the long run. (If you don't know our history, because of everything that happened with Beck, they told me that I am a carrier of a balanced genetic translocation and that it would be hard to have babies on our own with out a very high risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or a severly disabled child). The thought of going through any more of those 3 senerios is not something that mentally and emotionally I feel like I want to do...which is another reason egg donation is so appealling. I can carry a baby, but my eggs aren't all normal, so we can bypass the bad part and go straight to the good stuff!

We have also decided to use one of my dearest and best friend's eggs. This is the part the excites me the most! I am first of all so grateful that she is willing to endure daily injections of hormones and an invasive procedure so that I can have a baby. Knowing I will have such an amazing, caring, smart, beautiful and giving person's genes is such a comfort. I can' wait to see how this baby will be and who they will become!

We are charting a new and unknown path, but I am confident and hopeful for the future. I will try and keep up with everything...The holidays are going to be hard and we will be starting everything next week. They say if everything goes as planned, I should be pregnant by mid-February! That sounds so weird to say and it has been something I have wanted to say for such a long time...It makes me emotional just to think that a healthy, stress free, "normal" pregnancy could only be a month away!

Halloween

Ok, I know this is kinda late, but I have been slow to write. It is hard keeping this blog thing up. Don't get me wrong I love doing it and have so many thoughts to put down, it's just finding the quiet time to do it!

So Halloween was the first with without Beck holiday. While most new moms fret about what to dress their baby up as, I was fretting on what to dress Becca, my dog, up as. I know it sounds funny, but since Beck is not here to dress up, I've got to have somebody to dress up.

I had a moment to think about what I would have been doing with Beck this Halloween, but then quickly pushed that out of my mind. I can sit and think of all the "what ifs" and "how it would be" all day, but that's not reality and it won't bring him back. Beck is not here and I have to accept that...He is gone, he won't be back and that's that. It helps me to be realistic about the harshness of the situation...confronting it head on and not having any illusions about the reality of it all is helping me heal.

All that being said...Halloween, went a lot better than I anticipated. I loved seeing the kids all dressed up. I was also surprised that instead of being mad, jealous, sad about what other people had and I didn't...I actually felt hopeful, knowing that Forrest and I will eventually be dressing our kids up in cute bug costumes someday, that we will have other years of firsts filled with so many great memories of the children we will have...I can't wait for that day!

So until that time comes, I am dressing my pets up, or should I say pet. Gracie will not wear costumes and barks at everybody, but Becca will wear them and she is great with kids. So as we handed out candy on our porch Becca greeted everybody as a big giant Banana! Halloween is great! Thanks Becca, for being such a good sport...If I ever need a to smile or good laugh, I just look at this picture...

Taking down the pictures

So it's been almost 5 months since Beck passed away and until last week we have not taken a single picture down from his funeral. If you don't know, we had his service at our house and I covered one entire wall in our dining room with his pictures and scattered many more around the house. I haven't been able to take them down, and I look at them all the time.

Last weekend, Forrest and I were making dinner and I just said that I was ready to take them down. So we ate dinner, I cried and then I took them down one by one. Everytime I took one down, we talked about when the picture was taken and how we much we remember that time...I even kissed a couple of them like he was still here. It was a really sweet thing, once we had them all down, we put up our old pictures that we had previously on the wall and our dining room was back to the way it was. We decided to frame 4 of pictures of Beck, and put them around the house as tiny tributes. After it was all said and done, I felt so good!

Taking down those pictures spoke to the the way life is. As our lives move forward, Beck will not always be right in front of our face and thought of every second of everyday. He will be scattered, sweet memories in our mind like the pictures in our house. He will always be a special part of who we are, but he will not be all of who we are.

Now when I am in our house, I feel somewhat normal. As I walk through the different rooms, I feel little bits of Beck around me and it feels nice...and every now and then, I kiss his picture remembering him and that special time...

A new kind of Normal....

Hi everybody and welcome to our new home! I decided to keep Beck's site up as an homage to him and start a new site dedicated to life after our little superman...A fresh start if you will. Things have been crazy at the Patterson household...We finally have decided to start exploring our options as to how to build our family.

It's funny, you always dream about how your life will be, who you will marry, what you will do, how many kids you'll have, etc. But usually life doesn't end up like you planned...One thing I have learned is to not have any expectations on how things will be tomorrow, a year from now or even a minute from now. I feel like whatever is supposed to be happening is happening and that we are meant to be doing what we are doing now. That being said, I am waiting with out expectation as to how our family will turn out.

So in January we will start our journey into making our family. It might not be exactly how I had planned (two very cute and perfect kids made by me and Forrest), but I know however we decide to make our family, it will be beautiful! So that's the news...It's exciting and I can't wait to see how our life will unfold!